When you suspect that the baseball team that you’re watching is good but you don’t have quite enough evidence to support that thesis, you let yourself go through a bargaining phase that ignores certain pieces of evidence with the understanding that you will come back to when you better understand said team. When the Pirates […]

As the baseball world stands at this moment on a Friday afternoon, the Pirates are OK. They’re not in a playoff position and they’re not really in striking distance in the NL Central, but they’ve won a bunch of games lately, are within three games of the second Wild Card, and are beginning to sort […]

With John Jaso mired in a month-or-so-long slump and Josh Bell destroying all comers in Indianapolis, Bell’s omission from the Indy-to-Pittsburgh migration that’s been taking place in the last few weeks was starting to feel glaring. The glare is no more; Bell is being called up and will play tonight against the Cubs. With Indianapolis […]

It was inevitable that the Pirates would lose another baseball game at some point, of course, but it’s unfortunate that Tyler Glasnow’s big league debut couldn’t have been a little bit smoother. Glasnow was really excellent the first time or so through the Cardinal lineup; he walked the first hitter that he faced, but then […]

There are only a few more days until the 2016 edition of MLB All-Star Week is upon us. The 87th All-Star game and the exciting events surrounding it are set to take place at Petco Park in San Diego from July 10 through July 12. Check out our exclusive All-Star Week guide below and enjoy […]

I was a little bit surprised to see yesterday afternoon that in the immediate aftermath of and rejoicing about Tyler Glasnow’s promotion to start for the Pirates this afternoon, a small group of Pirate fans were already snarking. “Oh, so his control issues are magically fixed now?” The answer is that, no, his control problems aren’t magically […]

Let’s begin with the elephant in the room, shall we? I have my own opinions about whether the Pirates should be playing Jung Ho Kang right now, but I am aware that my opinions are not terribly relevant. One of the reasons, though, that I’m troubled by allowing athletes to play in situations like this […]

Buster Olney is reporting this morning that the Pirates are going to push Chad Kuhl’s scheduled start back a day this week and that they’re going to do it by calling Tyler Glasnow up to start in his place (I would link to Olney’s tweet, but he blocked me on Twitter years ago for some […]

It’s amazing how quickly the Pirates have settled into a nice little daily pattern: for the fifth straight game, their starter gave up an early lead, but limited the damage and settled down quickly, their offense erase that lead bit by bit, and the bullpen absolutely shut down the second half of the game for […]

The Chicago Tribune is reporting this afternoon that Jung Ho Kang is being investigated in Chicago for a sexual assault that took place immediately after a Pirates/Cubs game last month. There are more details in that Chicago Trib report, although you should be warned that there’s a description of the alleged assault in the story.

It is admittedly difficult to think beyond Jameson Taillon’s shoulder while there’s still uncertainty about his health, but it’s worth taking some time this afternoon and talking about Steven Brault, the pitcher called up to replace him, however temporarily. Just a couple of days ago, I was going back over the Travis Snider trade, and […]

A strange thing happened during the Pirates’ win against the Cardinals this afternoon; the Indianapolis Indians broke the news of Gerrit Cole’s rehab start on their twitter account, with none of the reporters that cover the team breaking the news first. The reason for that seems clear now: after the game, the Pirates announced that […]

The Pittsburgh Pirates are, despite themselves, not in an awful position at the season’s approximate half-way point. The awful slide that occupied most of their June happened because they purposefully built a bad rotation and thought they could sneak by on the strength of their bullpen, but had tragically misjudged both of those calculated risks. The rotation […]

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I’ve been waiting for this game for three weeks. It was one thing to watch 4/5ths of the rotation struggle and know that there was talent in AAA that might be able to help while the Cubs got off to a historic start and the Pirates faced down the potential of another Wild Card Game, but […]

Two years ago, future Hall of Famer Derek Jeter was making his final appearances at MLB stadiums across the nation. Fans far and wide were lining up at the gates of each American League ballpark and a handful of National League stadiums to see the career-long Yankee shortstop play in that particular city one final […]

In summary, the Pirates had a 6-1 lead, blew it, and then lost when they sent John Jaso on a full-count pitch that Gregory Polanco struck out on, despite Jaso barely beating out the double play throw on a slow roller to short that Jordy Mercer nearly beat into second base. If you can’t win […]

I don’t know if I’d say that this is the weirdest Pirate win that I’ve ever seen, but that’s only because of the sheer number of Pirate games I’ve seen and the way that time erodes memory. This was a weird game. Let us count the ways. Jeff Locke, who had previously given up 18 runs […]

One of the smartest and most cuttingly accurate things I’ve read about the Pirates’ recent struggles is this passage from Bucs Dugout after last night’s inevitable thrashing at the hands of the Cubs: The Pirates are still the team of Andrew McCutchen and Starling Marte and Jung Ho Kang and Gregory Polanco and Mark Melancon. […]